States play fast and loose with tobacco money

Monday

Dec 2, 2002 at 12:01 AMJun 17, 2009 at 9:58 AM

Even before the economy's nosedive, states were using their ill-gotten tobacco loot for causes other than anti-tobacco campaigns or programs to serve the public health. One instance -- the subject of some biting satire -- was North Carolina's use of some of its tobacco-settlement funds to boost the state's tobacco industry.

Even before the economy's nosedive, states were using their ill-gotten tobacco loot for causes other than anti-tobacco campaigns or programs to serve the public health. One instance -- the subject of some biting satire -- was North Carolina's use of some of its tobacco-settlement funds to boost the state's tobacco industry.

Now, as published reports inform us, even more states are otherwise directing the billions they began receiving annually after the tobacco industry agreed to the proposition that smokers don't smoke of their own volition. Smokers, the state suits alleged, smoke and often wreck their health because tobacco companies have not sufficiently intervened to keep them from smoking. Puzzling? You bet.

A pretense behind the absurdity of these suits was that the states would themselves rescue the smokers. How? They would take large hunks of tobacco-industry profits and plow the money into such projects as warning the young not to light up. Some states have done some of that, but with state revenues shrinking these days, an increasing number of states are using the money for such uses as school construction and collateral for bond issues, a McClatchy Newspapers story reports.

There's hypocrisy here, but it's worse than that. In the first instance, the suits undermined self-accountability, which is vital to any society that does not aspire to eventual dissolution. Next, they engaged in a form of legalized theft, bending time-honored legal precedents to leave the tobacco industry with next to no possible defense in court.

And now, they themselves are in a position of needing to keep the smoking habit alive in order to cope with their own financial distress. It's pathetic.